Case studies on the creative process of “lyric-first” lyric writing in Japanese

Abstract

To investigate the “lyric-first” approach to lyric writing in Japanese popular music, this study seeks to elucidate the lyric writing process by analyzing a chapter entitled “The Documentary of Lyric Writing” in the book by renowned lyricist Rei Nakanishi, in which he details his lyric writing techniques (Nakanishi, 2020). Nearly half of the process involved the lyricist’s self-evaluation and reflection on ideas, demonstrating the transformation of personal concepts into lyrics through a bottom-up process in the context of the Japanese language. Based on this analysis, an observational study was conducted with two additional lyricists to determine whether the same mechanism is applicable to others. The results show that one lyricist, unfamiliar with the lyric-first method, produced divergent lyrics in separate sections without a convergence of the monitored ideas. The other lyricist showed similarities to Nakanishi but used a different strategy by incorporating active visualization early in the writing process. These three cases suggest that the lyric-first method, particularly in the context of Japanese lyrics, is a highly specialized literary technique that requires simultaneous attention to word-level details and the overall structure of the lyric.